About Duncan

Ellisthion's all about 5E D&D at the moment, but has at times has played every edition from 1E AD&D through to 5E, plus Star Wars: Saga Edition, Paranoia, and more. He DMs a lot, and tends to make overly-complicated campaigns and characters.

I’ve introduced dozens of people to D&D over the years. There’s sometimes articles and posts about ‘how to choose classes for new players’ and the like, but I think they approach new players the wrong way, with too much information … Continue reading →

A female fighter, a tiefling rogue, and a dragonborn walk into a bar. Nobody blinks an eye, and the bartender calmly serves the full-plate-armoured girl, the dude with a tail, and the walking talking lizard. Why? Because in D&D, they’re … Continue reading →

You die. A simple statement, but one potentially accompanied by tears, laughter, or rage. A D&D character can die so easily, but the story doesn’t always end there. It shouldn’t always end there. Even without straight resurrection, a death can … Continue reading →

The best feature of a pen-and-paper roleplaying game, over an MMO or other more structured game, is the ability to be creative. But DMs vary significantly in how creative they allow their players to be, often through concerns about the … Continue reading →

I’ve been running a game where all the players are D&D noobs. But most of them have played MMOs, other computer RPGs, or even have read D&D novels, and some of this comes with some bad habits that need shaking once they play the real thing. So what are some of the more problematic bad habits that you will encounter? Continue reading →

Death in D&D is pretty cheap. Literally. The cost of diamonds for a Revivify or Raise Dead spell is nothing to high level adventurers. But there are so many fates a character can suffer that are worse than death, and, I dare say, even worse than having to read and understand the grapple rules… Continue reading →

A player asked me a question the other day during a gaming session. “Do we know how to tie ropes?” Thinking of all the nonsense of Use Rope in Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, I sighed, preparing to give an answer that I was going to be frustrated with. But a player suddenly spoke up: “Wait, my character background says that I was a sailor, I’d totally know how to tie knots!” Continue reading →

The Wiz Dice 100+ Pack of assorted polyhedral roleplaying dice seems like pretty good deal on face value. But how does the set compare to alternatives like Chessex Pound-o-Dice? We bought a pack to find out… Continue reading →

Dungeonscape, the official 5th Edition D&D electronic tools, opened up betas yesterday, and we’re in! We had a look around and see whether it’s really going to live up to our expectations. The following are our thoughts on what is very beta software. Continue reading →